Album Details / Review : The Works

The Works

Produced by Queen and Mack.
Engineered by Mack.
Cover Concept by Queen

Fred Mandel : rip-roaring piano finale on 'Prowl' synthesizer arrangements and programming on 'Radio Ga Ga' synth on 'Break Free' and candy floss on 'Hammer To Fall'.
Mack : Demolition fairlight programming on 'Machines'.

Recommended Songs : Radio Ga Ga (Taylor), It's a Hard Life (Mercury), Hammer to Fall (May)

The album 'The Works' was released 2 years after the poorly received 'Hot Space' but there were still tension in the Queen camp. The intervention of Freddie in some of these, may easily have saved Queen from a split.
They worked my harder on this album, but this also caused friction, as they poured over the tuning of individual notes, Brian was a perfectionist, Roger just wanted to get things done and didn't want to know the difference between F and Fadd9 (see Radio Ga Ga).

That aside, Queen output one of their most consistent albums for a while and made up for 'Hot Space'. 'Machines (Back to Humans)' is probably the only track I feel let the album down, one music magazing called this song 'Big flatulent nonsense'.

There are a few tracks in the album which I consider to be my favourites, and this has to be one of Queens best albums of the 80's along with 'A Kind of Magic'.

Did you know ... the video for 'Radio Ga Ga' contains actual footage from a film from the 1930s.